Hello friends!
I'm really just a lady, sitting in front of a laptop, asking you to be patient as she learns how to use a new website.
Okay! Finally! Welcome!
(Due to recent events known only to my body and my toilet, the last panel caption should really be updated to "lactose intolerant”, but it is what it is!!)
As you may know I did a two-week self-directed residency at Studio Faire this past August. It was exciting, but also anxiety-inducing due to the way my brain always leaps into overdrive (I’ve never travelled alone internationally before!! What if the residency was actually an elaborate con to lure me into a sex cult? No one I personally know has the skills necessary to retrieve me if I, a beautiful young woman, were to be abducted in Europe.)
In the end it wasn’t a sex cult, but actually a wonderful, lovely, gentle, food-filled and laughter-filled two weeks. There was a lot about it that I did anticipate (eating warm bread and soft cheese, drinking red wine every day, wondering daily if I would ever be good enough) but there were also a couple of very small things that came out of it related to my practice that I didn’t expect:
The first one is going to sound dorky, technical, and decidedly unexciting, but I modified a Procreate brush and it’s now my absolute favourite brush to use. Who would have thought this could bring me so much joy? The second was that one evening in my little studio space there, frustrated with the way I usually go about colouring my work, I eventually turned to the internet. I ended up watching a tutorial on colouring in Procreate by an illustrator that I really admire (Deb JJ Lee) and it’s changed how I go about colouring in Procreate. It feels corny to admit this but I rediscovered values in drawing! I feel revitalized in my colouring process! Truly, as exhilarating as it comes for a small lady working in 2D illustration. The tutorial led to me colouring the below piece for the Globe and Mail later that same evening:
I’m also right at the end of a one-year writing program at SFU called the Writer’s Studio. Our student anthology emerge 22 is out and available now if you’re interested! I have a wee short story in it. (‘Wee’ as descriptor being another unexpected thing from the residency in France, as three out of the other five household members were Scottish, four if you included Douglas the Dog.) We just had our last workshop this week and I fully cried over Zoom… I’m emotional okay!! This is the first year that I’ve taken my writing seriously, and also this beautiful group of people really pulled me through what has otherwise been a very difficult year. Totally accurate portraits of us below:
Okay that’s it for now. Talk to you soon hopefully??
teehee-ingly yours,
april